e. this spring, take on more lawn for less. not bad for our first spring. more saving. more doing. that's the power of the home depot. black friday is back but not for long. right now get bonnie 4 and 5 inch herbs and vegetables, 5 for $10. good morning from new york, i'm chris hayes, host of the new program "all in," airing 8 p.m. eastern. and i'll be watching as steve kornacki replaces me on this program "up with steve kornacki." my team and i care deeply about this program which is why we're glad to see steve taking the reins. today we wanted to share some of

the discussions we feel represent those times we came closest to meeting those aspirations. the subject of gun violence is fraught and complex and we are hard pressed to explain why our political system cannot passion the most common-sense measures but the nra winning several key battles in congress at the moment, it's easy to forget about how extreme and object tuesday the nra felt the week after the school shooting in newtown, connecticut. we talked about the response here on "up." >> i'm joined by tom, haley, author of piece "xo jane ", rich, owner and publisher of "swat magazine" and jackie hilly, executive director of new yorkers against gun violence. nra broke the week of silence following the newtown, con korngs shooting in a big way. they promised meaningful contributions to stop gun violence but in a press

conference, executive vie president wayne lapierre's only concrete solution seemed to be armed guards inside all of the nation's schools. >> i call on congress today to act immediately to appropriate whatever is necessary to put armed police officers in every single school in this nation. and to do it now, to make sure that blanket safety is in place when our kids return to school in january. >> for 30 minutes lapierre went on a diatribe, steadfast, unyielding and attempted to blame violence on things like video game it is and the number of insane monday sters, who in his words, populate our society. it turned into a glimpse of the mind behind the man who makes the nra, lobbying arms, tick. he was the riveting, chilling and revealing spectacle at a national press conference that i can remember. >> how many more copycats are

waiting in the wings for their moment of fame? how can we possibly even guess how many given our nation's refusal to create an active national database of the mentally ill? add another hurricane, terrorist attack or some other natural or man-made disaster, and you've got a recipe for a national nightmare. vicious, violent video games. a thousand music individual yoes. isn't fantasizing about killing people as a way to get your kicks really the filthiest form of pornography? throughout it all, too many in the national media, their corporate owners and their stockholders act as silent enablers if not complicit co-conspirators. the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy

with a gun. >> well, i have to say, i thought this was really an insane spectacle, this press conference. and i went into it thinking two things. one, i thought -- thought the nra would take a page out of the wall street post crisis play book. they said, look, we get it, we get it. it was a big crisis and we need some regulation. definitely. and they gave lip service to that. they even said, we'll work with you on regulation. then behind the scenes in the lobbying, in the back rooms, they were able to gut a lot of that regulation and put in loopholes. this seemed like a smart, strangic approach on the part of wall street because they were able to reap the pr benefits publicly of saying, yes, of course, of course, of course we need regulation, and also escape the worst of the actual real constraining effects of actual regulation. i was expecting a similar kind of approach from the nra.

that was clearly not at all the approach taken. were you surprised, rich? is that what you were expecting? >> well, i think i expected, yes, the nra to be more political, to take a more political approach. and i think what lapierre did is he took a more practical approach. i think that if we tease apart what he was saying, sometimes because we don't particularly appreciate the speaker, we don't hear the message. and i think that there was some value in what he was saying. he was not just talking about armed security in school. he was talking about redundant security for schools, if you will. and he was talking about providing grants to do audits for access to schools, for construction of schools. and to the extent that -- you know, to the extent that he brought up the media and the way we give these little monsters attention and the way we give

them an identity by mentioning their names and repeating their names, creates additional -- helps to create additional little monsters. we find that these types of crimes occur in clusters. so to that extent, lapierre is not that far off when he says how many are out there waiting? we have no idea. >> the data, we looked into the data on this copycat effect and there's been interesting findings in both directions. it's fairly unsettled. there's been some findings that suggest there's a copycat effect that large publicity of mass shootings induce people who are on the border of committing these things to plan them. our survey data shows that's not the case. the thing i found interesting, one place concretely, was the focus on schools. i understand why there's on schools because this act was so horrifying but schools are very safe places. i just want to show this graph because i think this is

important to just put this. this is homicides in elementary and high schools. over the years. what you see is, you know, there are not a lot of people killed in schools in america. every time someone is killed in a school in america, it's a horrific tragedy. in terms of what are our social problems, schools themselves as sites of violence are not the thing that we -- is not really the problem in terms of what the data say. i thought in focusing on the schools, that was maybe missing the problem. >> yeah. i think it's important to understand self-defense does not begin at the moment of conflict. there's collective self-defense. there's self-defense society enables through regulation, through norms it tries to establish, and, you know, one of the big things that's missing from this debate -- we can go back and forth and have a conversation about whether armed security would stop anything from happening, didn't help in columbine. but the bigger question is we as

a society, what does it say when you want to put more guns in your place of education n your place where you send your 5, 6, 7-year-old children. is that the message, the sort of society we actually want to be. or do we want to take self-defense before the moment of conflict. do we want to look at legislation, put policies in place that allow us to defend ourselves before we get to a point where we say, i wish that teacher had had an m-4. by you get to that point, it's too late. >> were you surprised by the press conference? >> i've been optistic for the nra's statement, waiting all week, and they ben i have to sa was very disappointed. i think their statement was a huge disservice to their membership. i know mechanics of the nra with fantastic expertise, very smart, could be very wonderful resources in this, and i think that statement did not reflect any sort of an engaging in

discourse and engaging in dialogue. i was shocked how much of a monologue this was. >> i think it's an emerging idea that's hopeful in liberal circles so i want to reality-check it that there's this gap between nra and membership. you see statistics about polling, about regulatory initiatives. i wonder how much you think that is the case. this is something that exists across the ideological spectrum. large, beltway groups pursuing an agenda will have differences from their constituencies/memberships. i'm curious what your feeling is on that. >> i was raised in the sort of 1970s, for lack of a better term, style of thinking about the nra, when they were still having a lot more dialogue and a lot more discourse than, perhaps, they are now.

and i was also raised with the mentality of them not being a lobby organization but being a resource of education and training for their members and being kind of a collective -- a collective resource. and then when i became a young kind of an adult woman, i realized that was not the situation that we were looking at with a lobbying arm like that. >> so, i think one of the things we need to look at that happened this week is the way all the issues were defined by the nra press conference was around the issue of gun-free schools. as you brought out in schools in this country are very, very safe. but in addition to that, the premise of that argument is if it weren't for the fact that we had said gun-free schools, there wouldn't be any shootings in schools but we don't have national campaigns that say gun-free malls, gun-free religious institutions, gun-free streets, so that doesn't stop

the killers from getting there. the killers are coming there to do whatever they want to do. and it's the access to the guns that make whatever happens in their minds a possibility. so, we should be talking about how we regulate who gets the guns because i don't think it matters whether you're a matter of the nra or you've never touched a gun, you don't want a gun in the wrong hands. >> before we get to regulation, i want to talk about gun culture, for lack of a better word. i do think at this moment we say, well, if you look at the international data, it's just a fact that america has more guns than anywhere else in the world relative to its population. next highest is yemen and we're almost double yemen. so there's something different about the u.s. this is american exceptionalism in one form or another. i want to talk to you particularly about why that is. right after we take this break. [ mom ] 3 days into school break and they're already bored.

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we can immediately make america's schools safer. the national rifle association, as america's preeminent trainer of law enforcement and security personnel, for the past 50 years, we have 11,000 police training instructors in the nra, is ready, willing and uniquely qualified to help. our training programs are the most advanced in the world. that expertise must be brought to bear, to protect our schools and our children now. the nra is going to bring all its knowledge, all its

dedication and all its resources to develop a model national school shield emergency response program. for every single school in america that wants it. >> that's the nra's wayne lapierre talking about the shield program yesterday at yesterday's press conference. richard, here's a question i want to ask you. there are two trends i think are interesting. you pointed this out last week when you were on the show. one is the total number of guns in the u.s. in household hands is increasing at the same time the percentage of households that have guns is dye decreasing. so, you have a situation in which a smaller -- you know, it's still very wildly held. i think 40% of all married households have a firearm in the home but it's been going like this whereas the amount of guns have been going like that. so it seems like we're on a trajectory in which more and more guns are in fewer and fewer hands. i wonder how you think the culture around firearm ownership

is changing right now in this country, or has been over, say, the last ten years or where it's going from here. >> i think there is a natural decline to some extent due to population moving into urban centers. and the regulation within those areas and the difficulty in obtaining concealed weapons permits in places like new york, in places like chicago. but i don't know that i agree that the percentage of households owning guns is decreasing. i think that there may be some underreporting there because we see every time there's one of these tragedies, in newtown, connecticut, there's a run on firearms -- >> across the country. we have places reporting highest single-day sales on record. >> and they're also reporting highest first purchase sales on

record. so, beam are -- people are understanding the fact that, to an extent, lapierre is right. once we've missed on our first, second and third redundant areas of security, and it comes to guns, the only thing that can stop a guy with a gun, a bad guy with a gun, is a good guy with a gun. >> isn't that a totally d distopian vision? if the solution is, look, arm everyone -- >> that's not the solution. >> well, if the solution is the only thing is to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun, and rear going to miss these redundancies, and put more and more weapons in people's hands, particularly if there's no training, no licensing -- >> oh, no, there's training. >> but no requirement for it. >> concealed carry permit there

is. >> not everywhere there isn't at all. it's very erratic. >> it can be erratic. there are certain states that don't require a concealed weapons permit at all. i agree. >> but here's my question. the psychological part of this. this is important to me, the idea of safety, like gun -- guns as a means of self-defense. there seems to be a few reasons people have guns. they're shooting as a recreational activity, hunting as a recreational activity, home defense, the idea that, right, i'm going to have a loaded weapon in my house because if someone breaks in, i want to defend my house. and then there's this kind of vision of just the enjoyment of interfacing with the weapon, the gear -- something you to want say about the psychology of all of this. >> well, because i'm not by any means an expert on firearms, but what pushed me to write this article was the kind of vitriol that we were seeing in the gun

debate, for lack of a better term. and what upset me was that we keep referring to gun culture in america as if it's this monolithic ideal. and gun culture means a lot of things to a lot of different people. west texas gun culture is very different than st. louis inner city gun culture which is very different from miami gun culture. to that point, i don't think -- i think that your -- the only place you have meaningful discourse comes out of the middle. not because the middle is moderate, but because that's the only place people are talking. what you want to do is you want to have a set of dialogue in the middle, because after connecticut happened, what we saw was a dueling set of monologues on either side and they were very, very loud and everybody was shouting. it's physically impossible to think and shout at the same time. >> will you tell me what --

tell -- for viewers that haven't read this article, walk us through the basics of what you wrote about. >> i realized after connecticut, and i was having this very visceral reaction to how angry everybody was on both sides, i realized that guns have been present in my life growing up in west texas at a lot of different milestones. all of my milestone moments have had guns present in them in some form or fashion, or most of them have. and then i realized, having married a man from inner city cincinnati who had never had any interaction with guns before, never seen one in real life, let alone held one and used one, that that was a very different upbringing and a very different scope from a lot of people. my milestones with guns have been a lot of positive and a lot of negative ones, obviously. so, that that inspired me to talk about the gap between my husband and i, because i thought it represented pretty well the gap between the nation when we

talk about gun cultures being a monolithic thing, and of course it's not. >> you grew up in baltimore and you've written about gun culture there. i want to talk about that after a break. families and busin welcome to the new new york state, where cutting taxes for families and businesses is our business. we've reduced taxes and lowered costs to save businesses more than two billion dollars to grow jobs,

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♪ the middle of this special moment and i need to run off to the bathroom. ♪ i'm fed up with always having to put my bladder's needs ahead of my daughter. ♪ so today, i'm finally talking to my doctor about overactive bladder symptoms. [ female announcer ] know that gotta go feeling? ask your doctor about prescription toviaz. one toviaz pill a day significantly reduces sudden urges and accidents, for 24 hours. if you have certain stomach problems or glaucoma, or can not empty your bladder, you should not take toviaz. get emergency medical help right away

if your face, lips, throat or tongue swells. toviaz can cause blurred vision, dizziness, drowsiness and decreased sweating. do not drive, operate machinery or do unsafe tasks until you know how toviaz affects you. the most common side effects are dry mouth and constipation. talk to your doctor about toviaz. we just said a very important point how our vision of guns is very different based on where you're coming from. i'm wondering how you think about guns growing up in baltimore. >> i grew up in baltimores in the '80s and late '90s where gun violence was absolutely ridiculous, just off the chart. at the same time, i'm african-american, i come from a very politicized african-american family. my dad was in the black panther party. the poster of malcolm x with the

m-1 was very popular when i was young. and i don't say that just to talk about cosmetic things. i say that to make the point that the notion of self-defense was very important to me and very important in the community i grew up. when people talk about the desire, the need, to have a gun in the house because you don't know if the cops will get there, you don't know if they'll get there in time, i'm very much connected to that. i have a degree of sympathy. if i didn't live in new york, might have a gun in my house. i don't know if i can say that. people that own a gun, i'm totally there with you. but when you get to the point when you say there should be no regulation, no anything, when you start rolling back regulation, getting to a point where it's easier for a felon to restore their gun rights than to restore their voting rights, then i have a little trouble. i think we're going beyond self-defense. >> i'm glad you invoked the black panthers because i wanted

to make this point. last weekend i was talking about right to work laws and their origin which have some unsavory origins and essentially white supremacy in the south and the fear about unions being a site of integration. but gun control actually, fascinatingly, the first big piece of gun control legislation is introduced in 1967 after. black panthers show up at the california state capital with loaded weapons. and ronald reagan is the governor at the time supports it. as a black panther strategy of self-defense became more and more effective of mobilizing members of the black community, the panthers attracted even greater attention among authorities. on april 5, 1967, assemblyman mull ford introduced a bill in the california legislature proposing to outlaw carrying a loaded weapon. >> to understand where the panthers were coming from this that period, immediately after slavery, in the period of

reconstruction, the first thing people do is they try to take the guns out of the african-american community so the community can then be disempowered and oppressed. what i'm saying is there's a natural affinity for the notion that i have the right to secure myself among many african-americans but we're going to a kind of -- >> in the history of this -- the history of this is very important. this is the jim crowe laws, the original gun laws throughout the south. the jim krou laws which established all of the laws against ownership, against carrying in certain places, came after the civil war. that happened to be a democratic party institution. and it's those laws that we've been fighting against in the conceal carry permit area for decades now. >> but let me ask -- so, okay, the context here to me seems important. i should note in 1956 after his

house was bombed, mlk applied for a permit to carry a concealed permit. the state adopted the nra endorsed -- >> so did senator feinstein. >> i'm asking you about this honestly. i hear about someone who has a whole bunch of firearms and spends a lot of times training with that firearms and thinking about how they're going to use them. and i think -- i cannot help but think there's something paranoid and creepy about this. there's this apocalyptic sense of fear. we are not in post reconstruction south. mlk in the heart of dixie in the 1950s. the context is very different about when people have this psychology that seems to me quite paranoid. explain why i'm wrong about that. >> that's relatively easy.

i'm the publisher of a firearms magazine. obviously, i have more than one or two weapons. there are different purposes for different weapons. we own .22 caliber for practice, we own shotguns for hunting, sporting clays and self-defense. perhaps one by the bedside if you don't have children in the house, perhaps one in a vault. and we have handguns for personal protection, for conceal carry. does that make you a gun nut? i don't think so. but i do think this, if you own those weapons, you damn sure better be trained and safe around them. i'm not talking about trained to kill somebody. i'm not talking about trained to use them in self-defense, but you should if that's what you purchase the gun for. i'm talking about trained to be safe around those firearms. and in order to be safe around those firearms, you have got to practice, like anything else. you have got to go to a range,

have you to -- in your piece, haley, you talked about firearms owner your entire life but you spoke about a glock, a pistol, that you took from somebody, the slowest move you ever hated was unloading this, that you had to unload it based on how you saw your boyfriend unload it. thumb, and it's -- and it's open. >> right. >> well, if she had -- if she had trained -- received training with that firearm she wouldn't have had that fear of opening it. >> let me just say this, this discussion i think is absolutely true of anybody that has a firearm should be trained and should be very knowledgeable about how to keep it safely in your home and how to load it safely and unload it safely. the problem is, there is no such requirement nationally and no such requirement in most states. so, once the person gets ahold of a gun, they don't have those requirements and they can go into any old state and go to a gun show and buy very, very

dangerous weapons. and just -- let's look at mrs. lanza, the facts of the case of mrs. lanza. she bought her gun because she felt she wanted protection. she was very experienced, very knowledgeable. enjoyed all the historical things you're talking about. lived if an area where she could do it on a regular basis. and she was killed in her home -- own home by her son. that is so frequently the case when guns go into the wrong hands. i hate to keep going back to the regulations, it's like, who has the gun in the first place? what decision do we make around who gets the gun? and how do we regulate that sensibly? >> i want to get your response after this break.

do we have a mower? no. a trimmer? no. we got nothing. we just bought our first house, we're on a budget. we're not ready for spring. well let's get you ready. very nice. you see these various colors. we got workshops every saturday. yes, maybe a little bit over here. this spring, take on more lawn for less. not bad for our first spring. more saving. more doing. that's the power of the home depot. black friday is back but not for long. right now get bonnie 4 and 5 inch herbs and vegetables, 5 for $10. departure. hertz gold plus rewards also offers ereturn-- our fastest way to return your car. just note your mileage and zap ! you're outta there ! we'll e-mail your receipt in a flash, too. it's just another way you'll be traveling at the speed of hertz.

i'm alex witt is here's what's happening. talks in iran is under way. the u.s. and five other powers are talking with iran about cutting back on uranium. iran insists they resident trying to build nuclear weapons. john kerry is embarking on a tour to middle east and asia, and talks will include the crisis in syria and threats from north korea. the planned shut down of 149 air traffic towers due to sequestration is on hold. an 83-year-old washington state man is recovering after being trapped in a trench. he was working in the trench yesterday when it collapsed and left the man bir ritd up to his neck. it took rescue workers an hour to extricate the man who suffered no injuries. now back to "up with chris hayes."

tom from "top chef" and oliver stone coming up. oh, he's a fighter alright.

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talking about guns and guns culture and gun training. haley, there was something you wanted to stay. >> i was really struck by what you said about how we need to go back to the regulations. we need to talk about the regulations and what is the solution about who can and can't own a gun. and i think it bothers me we're not having more of a conversation about what gun ownership looks like and what -- every tool is a weapon if you hold it right. so what guns as tools look like and what guns as weapons look like. and it bothers me that -- my husband, who had never had any experience with a firearm, has

now had more experience with firearms than i have because he went out shooting with me, and then he went out with a bachelor party and shot multiple handguns and multiple -- an ak and a bunch of things that had recoil modifications. he's just as pro-gun control as he ever was, which is much more than i am, but the fabric of hissening completely changed about what the difference was from firing my shotgun, which he fired and was comfortable firing, to an ak. >> one of the things you say -- one of the points you make in the piece, and i should be clear about this in the piece that it's about sort of recreational shooting with your parents and an abusive ex-boyfriend who held you at gunpoint and the difference in the experience of that -- of the weapon in those contexts. >> right. >> one of the things you say in the piece is you sort of put a lot on the weapon itself, right? like what the weapon's designed

to do. there's something about the weapon in the context of shooting. it's also the design and architecture of that item. >> here's something else i don't think we're talking about. we're looking at guns as inan mat objects, and they are, but guns like people, every single one has a story. it has a story of every single thing it's done, everything it's capable of doing and it has a story of what it may do in the future. and i don't think we're having that sort of a discussion. >> we sort of are, right? what we're talking about -- >> well -- >> here's exactly that, the bush master, which is famous -- there were two handguns, we should note but it was the sort of rifle -- i think it's called long rifle in the argot of the gun industry. this is -- this ad was used to sell the bush master. again, i keep wanting to not be swept up in my worst caricature stereotypes but then i see this,

this is the campaign about getting your man card back. colin f. is just unmanly. avoids eye contact with tough looking fifth greaters. his man card is revoked. when he gets a firearm, his man card is reissued. this seems to cater around the worst kind of impulses around guns. >> i want to say, this is like something i don't understand. power changes people. i grew up in a situation where it was not unlikely that you might have an interaction in the street that might end violently. if you put a gun on my hip, i was probably -- i would think i would be much more likely to escalate, to say things that maybe i would not say. we know if you're driving a car, we certainly have behaves we'll exhibit behind the safety of a wheel we would not exhibit as pedestrians or if we were riding

a bike. >> i'm slightly more profane driving my car than hosting this show. >> i think that ad is a real manifestation of that. >> let me jump in here. you have not carried a gun on your hip. i do. i can tell you that in my case it causes me to de-escalate every situation. the reason is, if i get in an altercation with you, what am i going to do? go fisticuffs with you with a .45 on my hip and go to ground? i'm certainly not intending to shoot you, so -- >> i think we -- >> we de-escalate in those situations. >> we can't legislate -- i certainly would agree you're someone of, perhaps, a really responsible disposition, but we can't legislate for the best case scenario. >> i have a temper like everybody else. >> here's my question. you talked about training, knowing what you're doing with these items you purchased. i got an interesting e-mail from

a viewer talking about the difference in the state that he was in between -- he has a commercial driver's license. he was talking about the amount of regulation to maintain a commercial driver's license. this is just to drive around the van especially he runs his small business with. it's like every six months, you have to come in, pass a competency test. all he's doing is driving around a van that, you know, he uses to run his small business. there's this very high standard for how to say to essentially society and the law, you are worthy of the ability to do this thing. one can imagine some kind of world in which the training you're talking about was actually legally checked. what would be wrong with that? well, i think it's a discussion for entire second show. what would be wrong with that, first of all, it would require registration of every gun owner in this country which is against --

>> constitutionally odious. >> you answer the slippery slope right there. >> how do we have to register cars and have insurance and we should not -- >> because it's a privilege. because it's a privilege. >> it's a -- >> because in our law, that's considered a privilege to allow you to drive. it is not a privilege to allow you to own a gun. it's a constitutionally guaranteed right in the bill of rights which tells you it doesn't even -- >> from a moral perspective, that doesn't bother you at all? a gun is intended to end a life, a maybe not a human life -- >> a hatchet or ma chety is the same. look at what they're doing in china with edged weapons? do we limit there? >> the lethality is different there. >> the lethality? how many were killed most recently in china? >> 27 were stabbed and they all survived. none died. >> but they have other lethal ones as well. >> there are been several multiple killings --

>> real return to this topic tomorrow and talk about regulation, and i would love to have you back at the table. and jackie hilly from new yorkers against gun violence. thank you again. you're watching "the best of up." [ female announcer ] nature valley protein bars, with simple, real ingredients, like roasted peanuts, creamy peanut butter, and a rich dark-chocolate flavor, plus 10 grams of protein, so it's energy straight from nature to you. nature valley protein bars.

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the weekend after sandy devastated communities on the east coast, flooding the new york city subway system, leaving millions without power and killing over 100 people. i spoke about the urgent need for a elected officials to address climate change and the ramifications seriously. in the days after with those in the northeast living without heat, and after a presidential campaign with almost no mention

of carbon emission, it seems there might finally be political movement on the issue. after sandy it was clear, we could choose to limit the amount of carbon we put in the air or choose a future with more storms. our elected officials are stuck obsessing over our debt and deficit. here on "up," i argued failing to act is a choice in and of itself. the wrong choice. >> my story of the week. what's at stake. at about 8 p.m. on monday night the east facing windows in my brooklyn apartment started to bubble and buckle inward in a deeply unsettling way. the wind howled and we thought it prudent to move our way away from the wall exposed to the elements. that one moment of sharp anxiety is as bad assist things got. we were lucky. my neighborhood is on high enough ground it wasn't flooded by the storm surge. a few downed trees that took out parked cars and that's it. a few neighborhoods over a young couple were out walking their

dog at some point that evening and they were struck by a falling tree and killed. they are two of the estimated 109 people who have died due to the storm in the u.s., a death toll mersfully lower than one might anticipate given the scale of the damage. destruction is most evident in new york city, staten island, and the powerless precincts of lower manhattan where cars roll through intersections without streetlights and commuters trundle over the bridges, over an east river whose waters overfilled the banks flooding the subway systems. the mta chairman said new york subways have, quote, never faced a disaster as devastating. it's very rare when the subways in the city don't run. but there is something simultaneously awful and exhilarating about those moments when normalcy is suspended. new yorkers will still tell you about the solidarity and

fellowship they shared with their neighbors on the stoops on the lightless nights of the 2003 blackout or the comfort and aid they found in each other as they fled through the streets on foot covered in dust away from the falling towers. obviously, the loss of life and intensity of trauma caused by sandy is nowhere near the scale of 9/11, but it's fair to say the city hasn't been this devastated since that september day. and as many unsung civil servants labored tirelessly to get the city working again, i'm reminded one of the raw truths of 9/11 is the first thing a competent government must do is protect its citizens. it can't protect them from everything, nor should it try, but we all recognized amidst the horror of 9/11 that we want our government, first and foremost, to keep us safe. the state cannot eliminate senseless death but it is its duty to reduce its likelihood. it's a conservative insight, really, the idea that government's job before all else is to keep its citizens secure,

to protect them, that everything else comes after. the lefty that i am, i am reminded that it contains an undenial core truth. and, yet, here we sit with a political system that could barely bring itself to acknowledge or discuss the tangible danger climate change poses to us, never mind undertake the massive sustained effort necessary to combat and adament to it. andrew cuomo, as careful a politician as you'll see, tried to note the elephant in the room without ever naming it. >> there has been a series of extreme weather incidents. anyone that's, that's not a political statement, that's a factual statement. anyone who says there's not a dramatic change in weather patterns i think is denying reality. >> his endorsement of president obama this week, mayor michael bloomberg wrote, in 14 months two hurricanes have forced to

evacuate two neighborhoods. something our city government has never done before. if this is a trend, it's simply not sustainable. no, it's not sustainable. things that can't go on don't. it's true. sandy was a freak storm, a back luck confluence of events. but this climate, our climate, is warming. as it does, low probability events like this will become more probable and more intense. carbon emissions are trapping extra energy in our atmosphere and comes more extremes, higher sea levels, higher droughts, hotter summers and heavier, wetter storms. we need a crash program in this country right now to re-engineer to deal with the climate disruptions we've already endured, the carbon we've already put in the atmosphere, as well as aggressive change of our economy and society to reduce the amount of carbon we will put into the atmosphere in

the future. this is as fundamental as elemental has human endeavors get. the story of civilization is the long tale of crusaders for order battling the unceasing reality of chaos. and it is a kind of miracle we have succeeded as much as we have. that airplanes fly through the air and roads plunge beneath the water and the team teeming lattice work of human life exist in the manifold in probable places it does but it's the grand iron any imposing this improbable order on the world we've released millions of stored up carbon in the atmosphere, which is altering the climate and threatening the monuments of civilization we so cherish. we absolutely have it within us, collectively, to beat back the forces of chaos once again. we must choose to do so. and the time for choosing is now. you are either on the side of your fellow citizens and residents of this planet or you are on the side of the storms as yet unnamed. you cannot be neutral.

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that's the way we set the standard for intensely rich, luscious flavor. so our story of fresh taste always ends... deliciously. when it comes to taste, philadelphia sets the standard. from new york, i'm chris hayes. every week on this program we attempt to deconstruct our politics and politicians to identify what forces move us collectively toward the better. in november i had the pleasure of sitting down with a man who considered that question when writing about one of our greatest presidents, abraham lincoln. screen writer tony explains how he came to understand the complicated president and why he focused the film not on the battles of the civil war but on the political battles of washington. as you'll see, the comparisons

and the contrasts with barack obama are not far from mind. >> stands, stinking the moral of the gentleman from ohio, proof that some men are inferior, endowed by their maker with dim wits, with cold, slime in their veins instead of hot, red blood. you are more reptile than man, george. so low and flat that the foot of man is incapable of crushing you. >> how dare you -- >> tommy lee jones as thaddeus stevenin stev stevens. and a real moral visionary. one of the things that's great about this film is thaddeus stevens is one of the true moral beacons in american history. i don't think we talk enough about him.

his conception of equality, i mean, genuine equality between the races is ahead of even where we are today, i would say. >> it is. >> and what happens in the film is that we have this kind of -- these sort of two elements of progress. we have the kind of purity as channeled by thaddeus stevens and his pristine, uncompromising attitude toward his foes and then the imminently practical lincoln. what do you want viewers to take away from that, the kind of dance between those two? >> i mean, probably just to show thaddeus stevens to the country because he's -- he appears in two films that i know of, "tennessee johnson" and "birth of a nation" in both cases as kind of a devil. and even among liveng con linco

historians he's not given his due. right after the amendment passed, the coalition passed, amendment fell apart because congress began to jockey to get itself into position to take over reconstruction. part of stevens' vision of stripping all the southern states of statehood and would congress control, because congress admits states. and i wanted -- i think the guy was an astonishing figure, a great hero. his attitudes towards race feel completely contrary. he was an economic radical, which lincoln wasn't. he was a kind of socialist. he posed wall street and speculation on gold prices and so on. i mean, he was -- he was a visionary in many ways. and i think, you know, a very skilled politician.

not a starry-eyed guy, but like many of the people around lincoln at the time, somebody who didn't really understand how to pull off the trick of holding the country together, winning the war for the union and slowly advancing towards the abolition of slavery. i think it took lincoln actually two years to realize that the civil war could only end when slavery was abolished. i mean, i think he understood that as a principle as early, as we know, 1858 when he said the house divided against itself, et cetera. >> i think what's interesting about the politics of this film is that in the -- if you have thaddeus stevens as purr crusading, and lincoln

calculating achieving means to a similar end, the film puts the flum of the scale on lincoln. thaddeus stevens comes across as a great man but fundamentally when the chips are down and you need progress to be made, the person you want isn't the prophet. you want this calculating figure. i wonder, like, did writing this change your own politics? >> oh, absolutely. >> did you come out with different politics than you went in with? >> the eight years of bush preceding the -- i mean, i started during the bush administration, writing the miserable tale end but watching the obama administration has been a great education for me. my policies have already begun to change. i felt the kind of usual left impatience, and i think that's enormously important. it's an engine. lincoln said it. he really preferred, he said, to deal with people on the left to

people of the right because he felt people of the left, as he said, had their eyes facing zion-ward and people on the right, on a couple of occasions, were primarily interested in their own gating their own power and there wasn't a whole lot. he said they were more susceptible to ses session fever because the main thing was to stay in power and any kind of ideology was acceptable. we've seen recent examples of this. yeah i mean, i think there's such a thing, obviously, with too much patience with oppression and it's easy to be patient when you're the person not immediately suffering. on the other hand, too much impatience can make it impossible for anything to happen. the crux of the civil war was that the border state had to stay with the union or the war couldn't conceivably be won. >> lincoln crafted them staying

there, much to the chagrin of stevens and those who -- >> all the way to 1864, the second election, they were still looking for someone to replace lincoln. acceler-rental. at a hertz expressrent kiosk, you can rent a car without a reservation... and without a line. now that's a fast car. it's just another way you'll be traveling at the speed of hertz.

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last week the supreme court heard oral arguments in what may be the two most monumental gay propositions in america. doma and prop 8. in december of last year just after the court first announced it would hear these cases i sat down for a one-on-one interview with dan savage, famed sex columnist of the it gets better project to talk about the social

and political progress we've seen over the past decade on the issue of gay rights. when we spoke, the state of washington, where savage lives, had just begun marrying same-sex couples after a voter referendum legalized same-sex marriage and dan was preparing to marry his partner terry. here's our kovrgs. >> supreme court announced it will take the first serious look at the issue of gay equality. the supreme court's announcement comes days after christine gegoire changed the referendum. hundreds rushed to apply for marriage licenses which come with a required three-day waiting period. as you watch this right now, same-sex couples across the state, will be putting on

wedding dresses, pinning on, and one will be dan savage, author of the syndicated sex advice column "savage love" and his partner terry miller. they were one of the first in line to apply for a marriage license in king county on thursday. although when that -- when this airs, dan will be back in washington just hours from walking down the aisle, through the magic of tv time travel, i have dan with me here in new york right now. dan, thanks for being here. congratulations on getting future married. >> thank you. my pleasure. >> it's wonderful to have you here. i have to start with your reaction to the supreme court granting on this case because all eyes have been on this and there's a lot of, i think, tension and excitement in equal measure among equality activists over it. >> i'm going to date myself by saying, are we going to get lawrence v. texas or romer.

i remember that day when it came down, i remember poring over "the new york times" and being deaf stated about how bigoted that decision was, i want to reassure people and how bigoted it was kind of laid the groundwork for lawrence. i believe we're going to win this in the end. i hope the end comes next june with a supreme court decision upholding marriage equality, upholding the radical idea that gays and lesbians are entitled to equal protection under the law, like everybody else. but if we lose, and we very well could lose, we haven't lost. this battle isn't over until we win. that's what we saw in maine. you know, two years ago in main man we lost at the ballot box and a state marriage law that had been approved by the legislature, signed by the governor was overturned by the voters and we went back to the ballot box two years later and we won. the marriage fight is over when we say it's over and it's over when we win. even if we lose at the supreme court, there will be other supreme court tests and cases

because we'll keep living, existing, coming out, marrying and suing until we get justice. >> lawrence is the case that struck down the sodomy law in texas, as unconstitutional as written -- >> and 13 other states. sodomy laws that didn't just apply to gay couples alone, sodomy laws in three or four other states apply to hete heterosexual. any sex act that's not procreatively useful is illegal. >> we have a bottle of champagne. you brought this bottle of champagne. >> i did. >> this is a celebratory bottle of champagne. >> i'm in new york for two days and i think the hotel heard i was getting married and the hotel thought i was here with terry for our honeymoon so that was in our room but i'm here alone so i thought i would bring it with you. >> for me it's a rare opportunity to consume champagne on set, which i generally don't do from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m.

>> thanks to the maritime hotel in chelsea for it. >> you're already married, right? >> we married in canada on our tenth anniversary but we're getting remarried, renewing our vows, with a license. washington state asks if you're married to anyone else. doesn't ask if you were married before so we're not breaking the law. we fought really hard, with everyone else in wash, to get this law passed. we wanted to be a part of this day. and on our first wedding we didn't have any guests. we didn't have any friend there. we kind of snuck off to canada alone and eloped and married and then went to our tenth anniversary party without telling anyone at our tenth anniversary they were actually at a wedding reception. terry and i were the only ones who knew it. we're doing it more publicly this time and inviting family. >> you've written about this quite a bit, but the thinking about your conception of what marriage is and why -- why it's important to you and why, just from a personal level -- cheers, by the way, to you and all the other couples.

>> all the couples in washington state marrying this weekend and couples in maine and maryland who will soon be marrying, congratulations. >> personally and also politically, what was the thinki thinking process or discussion process with terry about wanting to do it? >> years ago when we first contemplated marriage -- i came out in 1981, which is a difficult time to come out, as a teenager, to your catholic parents and aids buzz saw and into the reagan administration, flying into those headwinds it was har. telling your catholic parents you were gay in 1981 was telling them you would never have children, never marry, never be a marine. in my adult life, we are married, we have a child we adopted since birth and raised almost 15, and we can be a marine. but for gas and leys and lesbia

marriage was trap if you didn't come out. if you didn't come out by the time you were 18 or 20, you would get married and then you could never come out. for a lot of other gays and lesbians, myself included, it was like marriage isn't something you had to think about and then you had to think about it and aassess what marriage meant. i know lots of straight people have those same reservations about what marriage means, so we didn't rush in. terry said to my mother, which was a mistake, when he said we were going to get married and he didn't want to act like straight people and and we have a schild people and my mother said, you can't be more straight than that. >> we had adopted and bringing a kid up together. we eventually came around, not just as gays and lesbians have, to the importance of marriage. one of the most important rights in marriage, it's hugely important, a lot of lesbians and

gays, that have families like mine, when you marry, you declare your next of kin. you get to choose. it's empowering to say this person is my next of kin. not my parents, my siblings, my distant cousins, but this person i have chosen makes medical decisions for me, the first person doctors turn to in a crisis, is my most immediate family member. to have that right, as a gay person is hugely important. [ male announcer] surprise -- you're having triplets. [ babies crying ] surprise -- your house was built on an ancient burial ground. [ ghosts moaning ] surprise -- your car needs a new transmission. [ coyote howls ] how about no more surprises? now you can get all the online trading tools you need without any surprise fees. ♪ it's not rocket science. it's just common sense. from td ameritrade.

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[ female announcer ] if you can't afford your medication, welcnew york state, where cutting taxes for families and businesses is our business. we've reduced taxes and lowered costs to save businesses more than two billion dollars to grow jobs, cut middle class income taxes to the lowest rate in sixty years, and we're creating tax free zones for business startups. the new new york is working creating tens of thousands of new businesses, and we're just getting started. to grow or start your business visit thenewny.com when academy award winning film maker oliver stone came up he wanted to talk about his showtime documentary "the untold history of the united states," we did too. first i wanted to talk to him as a director whose based real

known films, on film maker's responsibility to fidelity of truth, especially in the confines of hollywood whose main purpose is to make things up. >> i want to talk about movies, truth and the responsibilities of the artist with history because it's a topic much on my mind this year. stone's biographer once wrote of stone's approach to story telling as, quote, stone sees the mission as communicating the spiritual truth of the story. he may even slightly distort the factual truth sometimes for the good of the goal. because of these attitudes he has never understood why people get offended when he tells what he believes is the truth. great to have you here. thank you for getting up early on a saturday morning. >> thank you. it's a challenge. >> i've been really interested in this debate we seem to be having this year because of the crop of academy award films, three of which are so heavily focused in either specific

historical periods, specific historical actors or specific historical record, specifically "zero dark thirty". >> i heard you the other day. >> when you approach a film -- you've done a number of these, jfk famously, which drew lots of criticism, nixon, what do you believe the responsibility is of the film maker to the fooil fidelity of what actually happened? >> i think you have to approach it like a college final. you do as much research as can you. i mean, i honestly believed after i went through tons of research that mr. kennedy was killed. so i have no problem with making a movie. i always said at the time, i said, this is a countermyth to the myth of the warren commission. i was very clear about that. i got in a lot of hot water. people said i was trying to distort the truth but it hadn't been established by the warren commission because to me it's a false document, doesn't read logically, so i followed the

line of thinking and talked to other people. i didn't have a problem with that. i never presented that as i countertruth. >> this is something film makers do, which drives me crazy, is seeming to want to have it both ways. one way you say it's a countermyth but millions of people will see your movie and come away -- you know, they're not going to read the warren -- >> i hope so because i believe it. i do hope so. you can't -- we are going behind closed doors. when i made my movie "nixon" i had dialogue we wrote based on what we thought might happen between closed doors with mr. and mrs. nixon as well as cabinet member. you saw several behind closed door meetings. we based that on our instinct based on research. that's the best we can do. lincoln is the same thing, they go behind doors, they create a man played by an actor. you saw "w," the movie i made about mr. bush. again, you know, we don't know what the relationship really is but we sense our way through there. that's the best we can do. it's a historical drama.

it was never presented as a documentary. when i did "untold history of the united states" there i'm saying these are the facts. we've researched them, they've been fact-checked. >> why are you drawn as a film maker to actual historical figures in history? >> i think it's very dramatic. you know, it's shakespearean stuff, greek drama, power. these men and women who run things and do things -- you know, the greeks loved it. i always felt nixon was a very ugly man to me because my father respected him deeply. he was a big figure in his time. i wanted to get underneath that authority figure and find the truth. i found my truth. i don't know what you thought of the movie. >> i liked "nixon" quite a bit. >> it it's true he ended up on his knees praying with

kissinger, which is a great pairable and probably did happen based on what people said, i thought that was a wonderful moment. the whole movie is geared to arrive at that moment. >> "the untold history "request which we'll talk about more with your co-author, a lot is about mythology, mythologies that get wrapped around what america is. this idea of a countermyth which is the project of your uber, right -- >> maybe it is. to me the fact we had to drop the atomic bomb on japan to save american lives is a myth. and it's a myth that's been bought into by the american people. >> but one of the things that comes across in the series is the role that hollywood plays, the central role hollywood makes in myth-making. in the myth-making we have about ourselves. i kind of want you to talk about the role that hollywood plays in the kind of myth we have about ourselves as americans after we take this quick break. [ male announcer ] this is betsy.

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it's what makes a subaru, a subaru. i'll alex witt and here's what's happening. nelson mandela has been discharged and heading home after spending nine kays in the hospital for pneumonia. doctors say he's shown gradual oouchlt and will continue receiving care at home. he's 94 years old. john kerry today begin a nine-day diplomatic journey that takes him to asia and middle east, his third trip there in two weeks. wikileaks leader julian assange may be a rebing without a cause but now hoping to run for office in australia. wikileaks has registered as a political party so he can run for a state senate seat but remain at ecuadorian embassy in london to avoid extradition charges to sweden. it is plan to shut down 149 air traffic control towers is on hold. they say they won't shut them

until june because of pending legal action. that's what's happening. i'm alex witt. join me at noon. now back to "up with chris hayes" here on msnbc. here with oliver stone, talking about myth-making and countermyth-making. when you look at krul toural criticism on the right hollywood has, i think part of it comes from a genuine and legitimate place which is the feeling of alienation of being at center of power where you have it within your capability to create these myths, right? there's something incredibly powerful about having to be oliver stone and make films that people see. and i think that's part of -- do you think that's part of why the right is so sort of beating up on hollywood all the time? it's a sense in which it's alienating to not have that power yourself. >> i don't know what they're talking about. they have been exerting their

power over the american imagination since the beginning of the century. i mean, hollywood was originally fairly left. although there was many people in the conservative side, like griffith did "the birth of a nation" but by the 1930s and '40s it was a left-leaning group making wonderful films, all the franc capper films, a lot of writers were communist and the writer of "mr. smith goes to washington," all these people were outed after -- in the late '40s. they were embarrassed by the credits they received in the '30s. there were committees set up in washington to drive all the so-called communist element out of hollywood. and the leaders of the studios were awful in their labor policies. walt disney, mayer, regarded as legends, they were horrible people, what they did to the workers of hollywood. actors and labor. and through the 1950s we went

through heavy anti-communist film period, like 50 films were made ridiculing communism. the first film about the atomic bomb was called "the beginning or the end" i think it was called and it was started as an anti-bomb movie. by the time it got through truman administration and all the regulatory agencies and hollywood, it was turned into a -- the bomb is a necessary thing type of movie. this went on, john wayne, he fought communist, he thought -- >> do you think that's -- how would you characterize if someone came from another country and had no experience with hollywood and they said, what are the politics like of hollywood? how would you describe them? >> i think by the time you hit rambo, stallone's nonsense where he goes to foreign countries and he kills houses of foreigners, trying to free somebody for an m.i.a. or you go to somalia where the blackhawk down, you remember the movie, they butcher

hundreds of black people and they're heroes and some were killed. the movie dwells on how they're slowly dying heroically the white men, but the black men are all getting slaughtered around them. same thing is true in -- a vigilante aspect to the home movie now. we saw it in death wish, dirty harry movies, and the movie -- i was going to say zero bin laden -- >> "zero dark thirty". >> it's bothersome not just on the torture level but bothersome on the idea that they don't think of taking the man alive, wounded, back for trial, showing him and dealing with the consequences of what he did. that kind of open discussion would have been very helpful. it was like nurenberg, which is a very important daush that w--e of the best movies "judgment of nurenberg," they took the nazis, and we understood it.

we didn't dealt with that. we kill him, walk away, no discussion about it. >> what i'm hearing is there's this strain of the supremacy of violence and vigilanteism that runs through hollywood -- >> all the way through. that's been the money-making thing. the films i do are the counter. they're in the minority by far. the "platoon" movie which came out against the m.i.a. movie and recognized, but a brief period. i did "born on the fourth of july" the same way. but by the mid-'90s, the pendulum was going back the other way. when we discovered the world war ii generation we made d-day and "saving private ryan," we made d-day the climax of world war ii. that was an interesting moment, the triumphalism of george bush, the first, bill clinton -- >> precedes it by a year or two. >> if you look at bush, the second, he was influenced by the

film. "black hawk down" came out, we cut to it, and also in 2000, "glade a "gladiator" was the best film, and these two were films of power and might in the same way "p patton influenced nixon to go into -- i don't know if you saw it, pro-american. americans don't lose. americans hate to lose. you're watching the best of "up." more right after this. ated secu, we consider ourselves business optimizers. how? by building custom security solutions that integrate video, access control, fire and intrusion protection. all backed up with world-class monitoring centers, thousands of qualified technicians,

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i was joined at the table, t tom, executive producer of "a place at the table," a new documentary about hunger in america. i wanted him to address the

complicate the role food plays in our culture and kitchens. at a time when more americans eat out than ever before, more than 50 million go hungry every day. tom understand our dichotomies around food as well as anyone. he shared his thoughts on food culture evolution and what we can do to feed the millions of americans that are food insecure. as promised, tom and his pastry chef, steven, gave our pastry plate a serious makeover. take a look. >> right now in the united states, the richest country in the world, there are 50 million americans who do not know where their next meal will come from. almost 17 million children who simply don't have enough to eat. hunger in the united states, a societal ill that was nearly eradicated has exploded in the wake of the great recession. a new documentary replaced yesterday "a place at the table" documents the epidemic. a mother of two talks about the

struggles of the assistance program. >> the assistance programs in the united states are very hard to quaul dpi for. it's like either you're starving or you don't get any help. what defines starving? like, if you don't eat for a day, are you starving? in their eyes, no. but in your eyes and the way you feel, of course. >> well, millions of americans don't have enough to eat, the government spent over $15 billion in 2011 alone subsidizing a food system that overproduces the worst types of foods, encourages production of cheap processed feeds laden with fats. the wild. and one that is developed an almost obsession with naturalness and purity of its food. joining us is tom, head judge on

"top chef," tenth season on bravo and founder of the kraft restaurant empire and winner of five james beard awards and it's a pleasure to have you here. >> thanks, chris. >> the documentary is -- you know, it's horrifying to watch this unfold. it's moving in seeing the faces of people that are just kind of grinding along. and i came away thinking, well, what's the failure here? like, what is wrong? what are we doing wrong? is this broadly a problem of poverty in general and hunger is the symptom? can we target hunger just itself or do we need to make sure people aren't poor? >> i think actually both. it is a symptom of poverty. but you can -- you can target the symptom. because the discussion of poverty takes on a much bigger sort of political discussion. you start getting questions of why are people living in poverty. it goes into sort of how we can fix that. but we know we can fix hunger because we fixed it before.

back in 1968 there was a news doc that came out by cbs news and it showed near starvation in united states and very quickly the populous demanded it was fixed. senators dole and mcgovern got together, wrote legislation, signed by richard nixon and we we create the safety net. until the 1980s and then hunger started to grow. this started way before the recession. it was beginning to creep up and compounded by the recession. >> we have supplemental nutrition program, called food stamps. we've done segments on the show before, mass expansion how many people are using it in the wake of the great recession. 44 million americans, 1 out of every 2 children will have food assistance. >> at some point in their life, 1 out of 2 children. >> is the point, that's not

enough? the question, should that be bigger? should eligibility be expanded? >> it should be. it's not enough. especially when you look at how food stamps, how it's calculated. the government uses something called a thrifty food plan and there are four plans they use by which to sort of benchmark how much calories or what foods you can buy. there's a thrifty plan, a low plan, medium plan and high plan. it's used for things like pegging alimony or child support or how many calories the military can receive. it's somewhat punitive. >> right. when they're sort of calculating, budgeting allowances for calories in other areas of the government, how much do we have to give people, they use these other plans but for this specific -- you know, the need y you get the thrifty plan. >> the tlifhrifty plan. it also takes into consideration, for instance, fish. they assume the only fish you'll buy on this planet is canned

tuna. they calculate you have more time, for some reason, i don't know why, that you can cook. so, the average person spent about just under five hours a week cooking. where on this plan they sort of say that you have 13 hours to prepare a meal. and then, you know, with that comes the -- because you have 13 hours you can buy other foods that take a long time to cook like beans and rice and stuff like that. >> so there's a bunch of assumptions about how people are going to get by with this assistance baked into calculating how much assistance they need that squeezes people. >> exactly. >> the other aspect, and it comes through in the -- you spent some sometime on it in the film, is a lot of -- a lot of the other program allotments is free lunches and breakfasts that kids get in schools. and there's a great scene -- i think we have this scene, don't we, this "top chef" challenge to create a meal with the budget constraints of a school cafeteria. take a look. >> you'll be feeding students using the same restrictive

budget our public schools have. $2.68 per child. that's $134 for all 50 kids. >> of that $134 i'm going to take $4 away because for the $2.68 that schools have to serve lunch, that includes labor and supplies and anything it takes to get that food to the plate. so $4 is actually a real gift. >> the bananas, despite the fact identify been cooking them for 20 minutes, they taste like white bread. they're very starchy. i decided to add more sugar and that will hopefully break down the starch. >> did you find that you had to add more sugar because the bananas were starchy? >> i believe there was a total of about two pounds of sugar. >> that's what happens when -- if we don't use good ingredients, you add a lot of sugar or fat to make them taste better. >> your classic "top chef "reaction shot with the eyes bugging out. i thought it was a good illustration of the way in which

price constraints lead to food that is actually less good for the person that's eating it. >> exactly. the food lunch program, it started actually way back. started in late 1800s, which was charity response to children that were hungry and they know -- they knew children showing up for school, they couldn't really focus, they weren't getting good grades. and then it was -- became a federal program under truman in '46. and i think we need to start looking at these programs as nutrition programs. they're not a handout. you know, we send kids to school, we give them books, we give them a desk, but we don't give them food. we're providing a meal now but it's not a good meal, not a healthy meal, not a nutritious meal. >> as opposed to what? >> people look at feeding perhaps whether it's snap or school lunch as a handout, a charity program. we have to look at it as a sort

of tool to prepare our children to eat, especially when you look at breakfast programs. a new study came out by deloit and they're showing when kids eat breakfast in school, their math scores go up by 17%. they have less incidences of being absent. so, there's all kinds of benefits. so the school lunch program is -- right now it's not funded. and that -- that clip you showed actually set up the -- i actually testified in front -- in congress on behalf of the school lunch program. the president asked for $10 billion over ten years. it gets watered down in the house to an $8 billion program over ten years. goes to the senate and gets watered down to $4.5 billion. half of that money comes from s.n.a.p. >> take it out of s.n.a.p.? >> take it out -- >> while we have record amounts of people qualifying for s.n.a.p. and eligibility. i did not know this until i saw the film, which is co-directed by your wife. >> my wife and her partner, laurie silverbush -- i'm sorry,

her partner lori. >> i did not know this. your mom ran a school cafeteria. >> she did, in elizabeth, nj nmg. you know, i didn't quite know my mom sort of had this -- more of a mission as managing this cafeteria until i tried to get her to retire. she was in her early 60s. you know, she said, tom, you know, i know the kids who are coming into my school lunchroom for breakfast and lunch, i know this is the only meal some of them are eating. that kind of hit me. i thought mom was going there for social time. i didn't realize there was a greater sort of mission behind it. >> i want to talk about the flipside of the kind of two americas in terms of food, which is the way that food resonates in our culture and the incredible importance we see it increasingly. a lot of things are good about that, bad about that, and gives us an opportunity to spotlight the pastry plate. we'll talk about that right after this break. ♪

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that's the pastry plate courtesy of the pastry chef at kraft. some people on the internet have noted the jarring disposition of this gorgeous bounty of food here and we're talking about hunger. that's the point. the point is there are really two americas in terms of food. people who have the resources and i am among those people. spend a lot of money on getting fresh, high quality food, from farm to table and things like that, and there's a whole part of america that is increasingly food insecure and getting whatever they can and in areas where they don't have access to anything fresh, right? you made a point of how invisible the aspect can be. >> it is. part of the for doing the film

was to change the face of hunger. for people in the united states to think of hunger, family victims, war victims. there's hunger here, but it doesn't look like that. one in six americans don't know their next meal is coming from. if you're in a crowded subway, most likely there are people hungry sitting nec to you. it's really important to sort of show that and this demonstrates it really well. there is abundance and there are people who are struggling. also it's very easy to demonize people for making a bad choice. you're feeding your kids sugary food and soda because fruits and vegetables are very expensive. >> you do a good job of the film of showing that. and the basic logistic. the huge trucks are not going to

a small town to unload at a local grocier. they're going to go to the major centers. >> it's a problem in rural and urban areas. i was talking to a friend of mine who opened up a food store in new orleans in an underserved community. we need more of that. there are programs in new york where they're taking bodegas and getting fresh fruits and vegetables in bodegas. in the city you have to take several buses to find a fresh fruit or vegetable because it's just not there. >> i'm really curious about the increasing role that food plays in our culture. the success of top chef is a perfect child. when julia child had a cooking show, that never existed before. it was the only one on tv. now top chef is massively

successful. the nation has a food issue every year. 20 years ago it didn't have the role in our culture that food does now. >> right, it's definitely become part of pop culture. in studio 54 and stuff like that. eventually woke up from their cocaine high and decided they needed another form of entertainment, but they still wanted to go out. so they gravitated towards restaurants. >> that was my discussion with top chef star. thank you for joining us today for "up". join us tomorrow and we'll have the discussion no one else had about the death of hugo chavez. plus my favor discussion about the character narrative of barack obama. join me every weeknight at 8:00 eastern for the new program, all in with chris hayes. steve kornacki is replacing me starting next weekend, saturday april 13th. coming up next is melissa

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